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A New Podcast
Episode #034 A New Podcast is an episode focusing on Star Wars: A New Hope, posted on 6 Dec 2015 as part of the podcast's continuing coverage of the Star Wars Sequels. Summary At last, #TheTwoFriends have rediscovered the existence of the three Star Wars movies made in the late 70's and early 80's! Here, they discuss the first movie that George Lucas "test-screened" in 1977: the third feature directing credit on his resumé that up to now Griffin and David could never quite remember, and the most successful so-called test-screening ever. After almost a full year of having to listen to Griffin and David talk about the terrible Phantom Menace trilogy, Ben is excited. He actually likes this movie! So good! Each of these movies, Star Wars Episodes IV, V, and VI, get just one episode of discussion but the co-hosts manage to incorporate many of the 'greatest hits' of the miniseries as it has developed - including a read of the opening crawl, a rundown of the movie's story with frequent digressions, and even a performance review at the end. Woo! The sheer joy of watching this movie, after getting beaten down by the Phantom Menace trilogy for so long, is palpable on-mic. Hey, it's that character from the Star Wars Card Trader app, Han Solo! Holy shit he's awesome! And that random Chewbacca character actually works here! Meanwhile, what's up with the relative dearth of CGI in this thing? Will Griffin manage to bring up Toy Story in an analogy? Why is there literally no mention at all of Luke and Leia and Darth Vader being related? Does R2-D2 really deserve to get a medal at the end? Milestones and Ephemera * Makeup needed on Peter Cushing to play Governor Tarkin: virtually none * Discussion of Han Solo's dick: plentiful * Is this the best Phantom Menace movie yet: Yes * Griffin's favorite character: Porkins * Griffin legit blows David's mind with an observation about alien languages in this movie, as compared to the Phantom Menace trilogy. Housekeeping! Before this episode was recorded, the UCB renewed its agreement, negotiated with Producer Ben, to host the podcast for at least another year as part of a general distribution deal. Because part of this deal concerned sponsorship or some form of monetization to pay the bills, this is the first episode which made mention of ads possibly appearing on this podcast. Notably Griffin was enthused about getting to read ad copy himself; when he learned that most likely they would be edited into the show by Producer Ben in post-production, he 'threatened' to cancel the deal because he wanted to read copy. As it turned out, advertisements did not become any part of Blank Check with Griffin and David until after it had migrated from UCB to Audioboom in mid-2017. See Recurring Features for more info. This also marks the point when the co-hosts of Griffin and David Present officially announced that they wanted to rebrand with a new name, hopefully one that would make the podcast easier for new listeners to find. Nominally they solicited listener opinion on the David's pitch of Blank Check with Griffin and David, but in retrospect they had their minds pretty much made up which is good.